X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1085) Subject: Re: [geda-user] Find rat lines From: John Doty In-Reply-To: Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:27:14 -0700 Message-Id: <898C7D41-7B55-4D61-9CC6-7ABB560C144E@noqsi.com> References: <20121204183305 DOT 6b04c0dc AT jive DOT levalinux DOT org> <20121208112649 DOT 388a9d22 AT jive DOT levalinux DOT org> <1355011808 DOT 19390 DOT 8 DOT camel AT localhost> <1355188647 DOT 12937 DOT 14 DOT camel AT localhost> <1355442697 DOT 2993 DOT 14 DOT camel AT localhost> <008677C3-7BA0-4B7D-B8E7-D0A5B2CCC573 AT noqsi DOT com> To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1085) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id qBE3RM3Z015926 Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com X-Mailing-List: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com Precedence: bulk On Dec 13, 2012, at 7:53 PM, gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu wrote: > > > On Thu, 13 Dec 2012, John Doty wrote: > >> Will they find short circuits as and reliably as the simple way? Will users find it easy to understand what's going on? Of course not. They may be useful for more elaborate analysis, but a complicated algorithm used as the basis of a heuristic is not going to be as usable as the simple, rigorous approach. And believe me, simply being able to inspect and adjust the properties and affinities of an object would be a tremendous improvement in the comprehensibility of pcb. > > See the demo code I've written; takes about about 300 lines of C code if I don't delete the debug part, and is a generic solution for fiding the least number of traces you need to break t resolve the short. It is not heuristics but a clean, algorithm theory thing as simple that even I could understand and implement it with exactly 0 background in algorithm theory. I have no doubt it's a cool algorithm that finds the least number of traces. And, that kind of thing is interesting to know in a variety of circumstances. But but for finding an incidental short, "the least number of traces" is a heuristic. There's no guarantee that those are the correct traces to break. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ jpd AT noqsi DOT com